Visitation Street - by Ivy Pochoda (Paperback)

About the Book

Chosen by Denis Lehane for his eponymous imprint, Ivy Pochoda's Visitation Street is a riveting literary mystery set against the rough-hewn backdrop of the New York waterfront in Red Hook.

It's summertime in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a blue-collar dockside neighborhood. June and Val, two fifteen-year-olds, take a raft out onto the bay at night to see what they can see.

And then they disappear. Only Val will survive, washed ashore; semi-conscious in the weeds.

This shocking event will echo through the lives of a diverse cast of Red Hook residents. Fadi, the Lebanese bodega owner, hopes that his shop will be the place to share neighborhood news and troll for information about June's disappearance. Cree, just beginning to pull it together after his father's murder, unwittingly makes himself the chief suspect, but an enigmatic and elusive guardian is determined to keep him safe.

Val contends with the shadow of her missing friend and a truth she buries deep inside. Her teacher Jonathan, a Julliard School dropout and barfly, wrestles with dashed dreams and a past riddled with tragic sins.

Book Synopsis

Chosen by Dennis Lehane for his eponymous imprint, Ivy Pochoda's Visitation Street is a riveting literary mystery set against the rough-hewn backdrop of the New York waterfront in Red Hook.

It's summertime in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a blue-collar dockside neighborhood. June and Val, two fifteen-year-olds, take a raft out onto the bay at night to see what they can see.

And then they disappear. Only Val will survive, washed ashore; semi-conscious in the weeds.

This shocking event will echo through the lives of a diverse cast of Red Hook residents. Fadi, the Lebanese bodega owner, hopes that his shop will be the place to share neighborhood news and troll for information about June's disappearance. Cree, just beginning to pull it together after his father's murder, unwittingly makes himself the chief suspect, but an enigmatic and elusive guardian is determined to keep him safe.

Val contends with the shadow of her missing friend and a truth she buries deep inside. Her teacher Jonathan, a Julliard School dropout and barfly, wrestles with dashed dreams and a past riddled with tragic sins.

From the Back Cover

Summer in Red Hook, Brooklyn, an isolated blue-collar neighborhood where hipster gourmet supermarkets push against tired housing projects. Bored and listless, fifteen-year-old June and Val take a pink plastic raft out onto the bay.

But on the water, in the humid night, the girls disappear. Only Val will survive, washed ashore, bruised and unconscious, in the weeds. The shocking event will echo through a group of unforgettable characters, including Fadi, an ambitious Lebanese bodega owner; Cree, a lost teenager who unwittingly makes himself the cops' chief suspect; Jonathan, Julliard drop-out, barfly, and struggling high school teacher; and Val, the grieving girl who must contend with the shadow of her missing friend and a truth she holds deep inside.

Review Quotes

"Visitation Street is urban opera writ large. Gritty and magical, filled with mystery, poetry and pain, Ivy Pochoda's voice recalls Richard Price, Junot Diaz, and even Alice Sebold, yet it's indelibly her own." - Dennis Lehane
"Ivy Pochoda makes the saltiness of Brooklyn's Red Hook come to life so vividly that every time I looked up from the pages of this intoxicating novel, I was surprised not to be there. Reading Visitation Street, imbued as it is with mystery and danger, I am utterly convinced that Pochoda is herself a medium, capable of communicating across boundaries real and imagined, across noisy courtyards and over rough waves. She is simply too good at hearing voices-and sharing them-for that not to be the case." - Emma Straub, author of Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures
"Ivy Pochoda makes the saltiness of Brooklyn's Red Hook come to life so vividly that every time I looked up from the pages of this intoxicating novel, I was surprised not to be there. Visitation Street is imbued with mystery and danger. - Emma Straub, author of Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures
"Visitation Street explores a community's response to tragedy with crystalline prose, a dose of the uncanny, and an unblinking eye for both human frailty and resilience. Marvelous." - Deborah Harkness, bestselling author of A Discovery of Witches
"Visitation Street explores a community's response to tragedy with crystalline prose, a dose of the uncanny, and an unblinking eye for both human frailty and resilience. Marvelous." - Deborah Harkness, bestselling author of A Discovery of Witches
"Pochoda's premise is inspired, the novel that unfolds even more so. Rich characters, surprising shifts of plot and mood. I loved it." -Lionel Shriver, award winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver, award winning author of We Need to Talk About Kevin
"Utterly transporting."-People - People
"Fans of Richard Price will immediately recognize his New York here, with its barely concealed ethnic tensions played out on a landscape of grit sprinkled with flecks of beauty. . . . Visitation Street is an impressive entry into the field . . . of female suspense novelists -- among them, Tana French, Laura Lippman and Kate Atkinson--who who are arguably writing more serious genre fiction than their male counterparts." - New York Times
"Masterful . . . a novel that pulls you deeper and deeper along in its powerful current. . . . While Pochoda brilliantly depicts the grime and submerged violence of Red Hook, she also soars above it, showing us the powerful aspirations of characters who hope and dream despite every reason not to. Like Lehane, Pochoda is an author with a profound understanding of human resilience, our indefatigable determination to seek light through the darkness. Her characters don't want to be rich, but to find their better selves, move beyond their limited circumstances. In Pochoda's telling, these aspirations are heroic." - Boston Globe
"A good story . . . an urban drama with shocking secrets at its heart. . . . Visitation Street contains elements of both mystery and ghost story. But thanks to Pochoda's lucid style and her gift for psychological exploration, the novel transcends genre to become a poignant chronicle of loss, isolation and the human need to wrest meaning from the senseless workings of chance." - Dallas Morning News
"Pochoda doesn't need the conventions of genre fiction to tell a compelling story. . . . With deep insight and a merciless eye, the author has created a cast of richly imagined characters who, in turn, bring the fading community of Red Hook to vivid life. This is the kind of novel the reader closes reluctantly, wishing it were possible to follow the characters into the future and make sure everything turns out well for them." - Washington Independent Review of Books
"There are certainly mystery elements in this deeply nuanced, well-crafted tale that has the disappearance of a teenage girl at its core. However, it is more of a character-driven work, somewhat reminiscent of Lawrence Block's Small Town in its kaleidoscopic snapshot of a Brooklyn neighborhood and its residents." - Bookreporter.com
"[R]iveting...will keep readers enthralled until the final page. The prose is so lyrical and detailed that readers will easily imagine themselves in Red Hook. A great read for those who enjoy urban mysteries and thrillers with a literary flair." - Library Journal (starred review)
"Visitation Street has a wonderfully eerie and intriguing premise...but it's the evocation of place, the spot-on rendering of a diverse cast of characters, and the poetic pitch of the writing that elevates the book into the sphere of literature." - Library Journal
"VISITATION STREET is a quiet, literary thriller told in lyrical, exacting prose. It's in the vein of Donna Tartt's "The Secret History" or Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones"--Los Angeles Times" - Los Angeles Times
“A powerfully beautiful novel” - Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review - New York Times Book Review
"A stunner of a literary thriller. Grade A-" -Entertainment Weekly - Entertainment Weekly
"Rich with characters and mood . . . Red Hook itself feels like a character-hard-worn, isolated from the rest of New York, left behind and forgotten. A terrific story in the vein of Dennis Lehane's fiction." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Visitation Street immersed me completely in the neighborhood of Red Hook, and brought its inhabitants to life in beautiful, haunting prose. Ivy Pochoda brings forth the full palette of human emotions in this gripping urban drama, a story that hurts you on one page and gives you hope on the next. A marvelous novel." - Michael Koryta, award winning author of So Cold the River
"Visitation Street [is] beautiful, haunting. Ivy Pochoda brings forth the full palette of human emotions in this gripping urban drama, a story that hurts you on one page and gives you hope on the next. A marvelous novel." - Michael Koryta, award winning author of So Cold the River
"Exquisitely written, Pochoda's poignant second novel examines how residents of Brooklyn's Red Hook neighborhood deal with grief, urban development, loss, and teenage angst. ... Pochoda couples a raw-edged, lyrical look at characters' innermost fears with an evocative view of Red Hook." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)